What's best for British capitalism . . . (2009)

Book Review from the September 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard

Globalisation Laid Bare. Lessons in International Business. Industry and Parliament Trust. 2009. £11.99.

The Industry and Parliament Trust is a body set up to promote “mutual understanding between the UK Parliament and the worlds of business, industry and commerce” and this is their take on globalisation. Introduced by Sir Richard Branson, it is a collection of short articles by various other capitalists and their academic and political supporters.

The contributors main concerns seem to be how to avoid protectionism re-emerging in the current crisis and how to accommodate to China as an emerging industrial and commercial power. The contributors from the three main parties (Vince Cable, Alan Duncan and Baron Mandelson) all say the same thing – “down with protectionism” and “keep liberalising world trade” – reflecting their common perception of what is in the best interest of British capitalism.

The only dissenters are “Indian ecofeminist” Vandana Shiva and Clare Short.

Adam Buick

Greasy Pole: Grow up and understand (2011)

The Greasy Pole column from the March 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

You can’t help feeling sorry for coalition ministers with their sleepless nights and restless days having to do something they call Taking Tough Decisions even when these lead to thousands of people catapulted into unemployment, agonising over whether to pay the rent or mortgage or buy food or try to keep warm in the winter. So it helps to know that, at any rate for those struggling ministers, there is another way. Some spin doctor in the deeper recesses of Westminster has come up with the idea that the victims of current policies might regard themselves as less repressed and impoverished if they could accept it all in a more mature and perceptive manner. One great advantage of this reasoning would be that it promises to be stunningly cheap to operate. Another is that any residual resentment by penurious benefit applicants and the like might well be stifled by their feelings of guilt at their own inadequacy in accepting reality.

Clegg

Here, for example, is Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, seemingly unshaken by his being abruptly transmogrified from the focus of a national mood of “Cleggmania” into “the most hated man in Britain”. The tension between the LibDems and their patient fans was aggravated by the fact that Clegg had led his party into the coalition along a path of dishonoured pledges and his excited complacency at holding so eminent a governmental post. Last November, before the Commons voted on the proposal to increase the university tuition fees, Clegg wrote to the President of the National Union of Students and, after asserting that the government’s intention was that graduates on lower incomes would be better off than now, stated that “I believe it is crucial that all of us are able to ensure that people know the true picture”. Take note of the use of words like “crucial…all of us…ensure…true picture…” designed to imply that anyone who does not fit into this compliant mould has defects which are – well, crucial. This argument might be more effective if it was not put by the same Nick Clegg who, when he was touting for votes during the general election, said that to raise tuition fees would be “a disaster”. So while we consider how to maintain a maturely informed attitude among the confusion, can we also settle where we place Clegg? Are we impressed that he eventually admitted the LibDems (including himself) should have thought more carefully before signing those flamboyantly reckless pledges? Or would it be more instructive to remember that this confession was a response to lost votes and the fact that Cleggmania had decayed into a septic memory of a disreputable past.

Cable 

Which brings us to the Deputy Prime Minister’s deputy who, while never embellished by Cablemania, has coincidentally been reduced from the world’s most immaculately insightful economist to piteously Vincible Vince. Among a procession of savaging blunders in early November Cable boasted to two undercover reporters from the Daily Telegraph who came to his constituency surgery pretending to need his advice that he had the power to scupper Rupert Murdoch’s attempt to completely take over BSkyB and that to get his own way in the coalition he could operate the “nuclear option” of threatening to resign from it. Although supposedly a hardened political operator, the terror of affluently bonused bankers, Cable seemed powerless of suspecting that he was being set up precisely to embarrass himself in such an unwise, almost terminal, style. An outraged David Cameron swiftly relieved him of these feverish delusions – and of some of his ministerial responsibilities. But he clung on as Business Secretary, in which post he had brushed aside the protests at the planned rise in tuition fees: “I think a lot of the people who are protesting actually don’t understand what’s being proposed. It doesn’t actually affect them – we’re talking about a system of graduate contribution that will only affect people who start going to university in a couple of years’ time”. There are however problems for anyone eager to give any weight to Cable’s views in this matter since he has himself demonstrated a distinct confusion in understanding – at times declaring himself to be in favour, then against, the rise in fees, then that he would abstain from voting (there are no prizes for guessing that, when he came to it, ambition overruled and he obediently supported the rise). But how are we to regard anyone so susceptible to trickery and confusion, who nevertheless tells us that we “don’t understand” our everyday problems?

Cameron

From the other bit of the coalition David Cameron, in what seemed like a fit of exasperation, hit out at the opponents of the “reform” of what are called public services (in which this government is merely following Labour’s policy). Cameron’s complaint is that the critics need to grow up and realise that what counts is the standards of the service rather than which organisation – state, private, charity – delivers it. Well growing up – although not in the way Cameron means – is mostly a useful, not to say necessary, process from which a certain education is assumed to follow. But until that happens we must work with the outrageous fact that an Old Etonian, ex-member of the vandal Bullingdon Club such as Cameron can lecture us about maturity when he is unable – or perhaps reluctant – to confront the fact that the working class exist under continual pressures of survival in their everyday lives. Dependency on employment in order to survive is a vastly educative, maturing experience. For example the housing charity Shelter recently reported that some 3 million people have problems paying their rent or mortgage, which means that millions of people live under the persistent threat of being homeless. According to Shelter’s chief executive “thousands of people are hanging on to their homes by the skin of their teeth…”. That is the kind of experience which should be enough to result in such enlightenment about capitalism as to be mightily serious for the Tories, Labour, LibDems and all other supporters of this chaotic, degrading social system.

Ivan

Editorial: Profits Before People, Again (2012)

Editorial from the April 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

At least the Coalition government knows how capitalism works –it runs on profits, so priority must be given to profitability and profit-making. It’s written all over their economic policies and was confirmed in last month’s budget.

The only way capitalism gets out of a slump is when profit-making opportunities reappear. When they do, “growth” resumes. This means that, in a slump, any government must not do anything that will adversely affect profitability and profit-making prospects. Just the opposite, it must encourage these. That is, if it is going to do anything. Another option is to simply let spontaneous economic forces operate to restore profitability, as through unprofitable firms going bust and their assets passing cheaply to their rivals and increased unemployment pushing down wages.

A government can help restore profitability in two ways. It can reduce taxes on profits.  In the budget, for the second year running, the Chancellor announced a cut in corporation tax, a direct tax on profits. This reduces government revenue, which means that it has to cut back on some of its other spending, as the present government is doing with a vengeance, forcing local councils to reduce public amenities and slashing payments to those who can’t find or who are unable to work. With more to come.

The second way a government can help restore profitability is to reinforce the downward pressures that mass unemployment exerts on wage levels. Two recently announced measures openly proclaim this as their aim.

The Chancellor confirmed that national pay bargaining for public sector workers is to be replaced by regional bargaining on the grounds that the present system results in wage levels in some regions being too high, so high that to attract workers employers have to pay higher wages than otherwise. The aim of regional pay bargaining is to reduce wages –and so boost profitability –in areas of the country where public service workers are considered to be overpaid.

The minimum wage is to go up in October but by only half the rate of price increases. So, it’s going to be reduced in real terms. For those under 21, the rate is not going to be increased at all. Business Secretary Vince Cable justified this on the grounds that it would make it easier for young people to get a job, i.e. the lower wage is aimed at boosting the profit prospects of firms employing workers on the minimum wage.

But what about taxes on the rich that have also been announced? That’s a side-show. “Tycoon taxes”, “mansion taxes” and the like are not taxes on profits, but taxes on the consumption of the capitalist class. A government can safely increase them in a slump as they don’t affect profitability. This even has the political advantage of allowing them to justify the austerity measures imposed on the rest of the population as “fair” as even the rich are effected.

It is true, though, as the Labour Opposition has been quick to point out, that this propaganda ploy has been rather undermined by the government’s reduction of the rate of tax on incomes over £150,000 from 50 to 45 percent, supposedly to attract overseas businesspeople to come to invest in Britain. But, as the traditional party of the rich, the Tories can’t clobber their clientele too much.

There is no alternative under capitalism. As long as capitalism lasts all governments have to pursue a policy of giving priority to profits. Profits before people is the rule. It’s why we need socialism.

Brief Reports (2012)

The Brief Reports Column from the June 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

A Leicester secondary school headmaster was under fire last week for mounting an 88mm howitzer on the roof of the school hall during the annual school egg and spoon race. Local parents complained that their children were being enlisted as gun crews when they had only volunteered for the 100 metres hurdles, and councillors expressed alarm at the unprecedented cost of ramping up school security. The headmaster, Mr Geoffrey Barking, said in a statement: ‘It’s a rough area. If it’s good enough for the Olympics, it’s good enough for us.’

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Education Secretary Michael Gove is to examine claims the Gay and Lesbian Teachers Association broke impartiality rules on the topic of Catholicism. It emerged this week that the GLTA wrote to nearly 400 state-funded schools inviting them to back a petition against Catholics.  Schools and teachers are forbidden to promote one-sided political arguments. The GLTA has denied breaking any laws, saying gay views on Catholics are personal, not political: ‘It is central to gay culture to treat everyone with respect, even people who commit unnatural acts in churches.’

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Labour is demanding that David Cameron makes a Commons statement on the row surrounding the Transport secretary, Jedi Walker. There have been calls for Mr Walker to resign after it was revealed that he appeared not to be doing his job properly. Mr Cameron told Newsnight last week that: ‘It may be true that Jed has not been taking bungs from BSkyB, that he has no special advisor working with the Murdochs, that he has never been to one of their parties, that he has no directorships in Murdoch-controlled companies and that he has never in any way been dishonest in the Register of Members’ Interests. However, I wish to put on record that in spite of this I have every confidence in him as a politician of my own calibre.’

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It was announced this week that the Home Office was to simplify the induction process for new members of MI5 and MI6 following an internal survey that revealed that recruitment was dropping because the BBC series ‘Spooks’ is not on anymore. A spokesman said: ‘We now ask applicants if they want to join the secret service, and if so, whether they can lock themselves successfully into a hold-all while lying in a bath. If they can do that, they’re in.’

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James Naughtie the Radio 4 presenter who famously introduced the culture secretary during a coughing fit in 2010 as ‘Jeremy Cunt the Hulture Minister’ has publicly apologised to listeners for publicly apologising to listeners. Mr Naughtie, 60, is seeking to assure Radio 4 fans who may be annoyed at his gaffe: ‘I wish to reassure readers that I was right in the first place. I hope nobody was offended by my unforgivable retraction’.

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Business Secretary Vince Cable has condemned proposals to make it easier for firms to sack under-performing staff as “the wrong approach”. Mr Cable told reporters: ‘There’s no sense scaring the pants off workers when they can’t afford pants. Besides, we don’t want to go round saying that incompetence is a sackable offence. People might get ideas.’

Cooking the Books: For the few not the many (2019)

The Cooking the Books Column from the July 2019 issue of the Socialist Standard

In an article headed ‘Why is the City falling for Comrade McDonnell? (Times, 11 May) Sky News Economics Editor Ed Conway made a shrewd point:

‘Despite promising to govern for the many not the few, some senior Labour insiders have had an epiphany: unless they get the few on board they may struggle to govern at all.’

The Labour Party, under long-time left-wingers Corbyn and McDonnell, may employ the rhetoric of the many against the few, but it has no intention of abolishing the few. In fact, in the event of a Labour government, the few would continue to own and control the means of production in the form of profit-seeking private enterprises. There is not even any intention to turn them from shareholders into government bondholders by a state take-over of ‘the commanding heights of the economy’, as Labour left-wingers used to advocate. These will remain in private capitalist hands.

So, a future Labour government would be governing in the context of a capitalist economy dominated by private enterprises. This was Conway’s point. It means these can’t be ignored. They will continue to be those who decide what is produced, when and where. And their decisions will be motivated by the consideration of what is profitable or not.

Corbyn and McDonnell will have to take this into account. They will have to allow them to continue to make profits and avoid doing anything that might interfere too much with this. If they don’t avoid this, they will provoke an economic downturn as the private owners stage an investment strike, refusing to produce what can’t be sold profitably. That will provoke dissatisfaction amongst the electorate who will kick the government out, at least unless it changes its economic strategy and accepts that profit-making has to come first.

This has happened so often with Labour and similar left-wing governments in other countries that it can almost be said to be one of the economic laws of capitalism: that any government which disrupts profit-making will provoke an economic downturn. Unless Corbyn and McDonnell do what Neil Kinnock once cynically called getting their betrayal in first – by declaring that they won’t harm the profit-making of the few (which is what ‘Comrade McDonnell’ might be doing on his visits to the City) – this will be their fate. In government, it will just be a matter of time before they come to accept this or get booted out.

But this is to jump the gun. In the present state of politics, while Labour might emerge from an election as the largest party in the House of Commons, a Labour majority there seems much less likely. There is more chance of a Labour minority government propped up by the Liberals and/or the Scots Nats. This would mean that any pretence of adopting anti-capitalist measures will be dropped. The SNP want an independent Scottish capitalist state while Vince Cable, the outgoing leader of the Lib Dems, has made his support for capitalism explicit:

‘Capitalism is being questioned in Britain more intensely than for decades. Some want to destroy it. Others believe that it is the only economic system which works, but want to reform it. I am in the latter camp’ (City AM, 14 May).

Corbyn and McDonnell are too, even if they don’t admit it. Reforming capitalism to make it work for the many always fails for the simple reason that, as a profit-making system, it can only work for the few.

Cooking the Books: Why the Arms Trade (2013)

The Cooking the Books column from the February 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, is the LibDem MP for Twickenham. At a meeting in his constituency on 29 November he was handed a petition signed by 9,000 demanding an end to arms sales to oppressive regimes. Among other things, the petitioners criticised the government for helping organise the two-yearly arms fair at the Excel Centre in London. According to the local paper:

‘Business Secretary Dr Cable defended his position and said the aerospace sector was helping to refuel the economy and countries should be allowed to protect themselves. Dr Cable said: “I am not a pacifist. I do accept that governments and countries have a right to defend themselves and that is done either through manufacturing or [importing] the weapons to do so”’ (Richmond & Twickenham Times, 7 December).

Actually, given capitalism (which both he and the petitioners accept), this is not an unreasonable answer. The world is divided politically into armed states whose governments preside over the operation of capitalism in the territory where their writ runs. These states are all jockeying for position over access to raw materials, markets, trade routes and investment outlets. It’s a struggle in which ‘might is right’.

In order to maintain their position, states need to arm themselves with the most destructive weapons they can afford, not necessarily to use but to show how much ‘might’ they have when it comes to negotiations over these economic matters. They need weapons for this just as much to ‘protect themselves’ in the event of invasion. In fact, actual war is only as a last resort, when a state considers that its ‘vital economic interests’ are under serious threat.

So, there is an economic demand for weapons, and where there is a paying demand a profit-seeking supply will arise to meet it. Britain has an arms-producing capacity – miscalled the ‘defence industry’ which can meet this demand. The capitalist firms concerned are not going to miss this opportunity to make profits, and the government is not going to discourage them. Quite the reverse. The Prime Minister himself has not hesitated to personally become a ‘merchant of death’:

‘The Prime Minister said Britain should support all sectors of the economy where it had a comparative advantage, including defence. He came under fire last week for pushing for contracts for Typhoon jets in UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman. He previously led trade missions to Africa, Indonesia, China, India, Russia, Mexico, Brazil, Japan and Malaysia’ (Times, 13 November).

Opponents of the arms trade argue that it promotes war. But they have got it the wrong way round. It is economic competition in which ‘might is right’ that promotes the arms trade. As long as capitalism lasts with this built-in competitive struggle between states over economic matters there will be a demand for arms and so an arms trade. No state which has, as Cameron put it, a ‘comparative advantage’ in arms production is going to renounce this profit-making advantage on ‘ethical’ grounds. This means that, given capitalism, the opponents, despite their sincerity and however justified their objection to arms and arms trading which socialists share, will unfortunately be tilting at windmills. The only way to stop it is to join us in campaigning to end capitalism.

Cooking the Books: It Wasn’t Socialism (2012)

The Cooking the Books Column from the July 2012 issue of the Socialist Standard

Commenting on multi-millionaire and Tory backwoodsman Adrian Beecroft’s description of LibDem Cabinet Minister Vince Cable as a “socialist” for criticising his proposal to make it easier for employers to sack workers, Owen Jones asked “How did ‘socialist’ turn into an insult?” (I newspaper, 25 May).

It’s a question we ourselves have often asked. Our answer has been that it’s because the word became associated with the Labour Party and the state capitalist dictatorship in the old USSR.

Although we consistently opposed both, we were unable to keep to the fore the original meaning of ‘socialism’ as a co-operative commonwealth based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production, with production for use, not the market or profit, and the end of having to work for wages.  Both Labour and the Russian dictatorship failed and people were encouraged to see this as the failure of socialism.

The early Labour Party’s claim was that, by a series of nationalisations and social reforms, a Labour government would be able to gradually improve workers’ living standards and progress towards socialism (which some of them understood in the same, original sense as us). It didn’t work out that way. In office, Labour had to govern capitalism on capitalism’s terms, as a profit-making system. This inevitably brought them into conflict with workers and to introduce wage restraint and restrictions on union activity.

The post-war Labour government did nationalise coal, the railways, gas, water and electricity but mainly in order to ensure that the rest of private industry got these provided in a more efficient (and subsidised) way. It also introduced a nation-wide social insurance system and health service, once again mainly to benefit employers by providing them with a relatively healthy and more productive workforce.

Although working conditions in the industries that were nationalised did improve, the basic conflict of interest between workers and employers that is built-in to capitalism continued, and so, therefore, did strikes. An economic crisis (and the need to finance a war in Korea) forced the post-war Labour government itself to begin the whittling away of some of the social reforms it had introduced. The same happened with the Labour governments of the 1960s and 1970s.

Instead of Labour gradually transforming capitalism, it was capitalism that gradually transformed Labour, from a party that talked of socialism even if only as a vague and long-term aspiration into an alternative management team for British Capitalism plc.

Jones noted that the word ‘socialism’“hasn’t made an appearance in a Labour manifesto since 1987.”But he doesn’t want to return to the original meaning but only to what the Labour Party used to mean by it years ago. “If socialists really were running the show in Britain”, he wrote, the banks “would be taken under genuine democratic control, forcing them to operate in the interests of society as a whole”; the rich would be forced to pay more tax; the railways and energy companies would be taken into “social ownership”and run by workers and consumers; more social housing would be built, and a “living wage”introduced.

This is Old Labour stuff –the dream of a democratically-run wages and profits system (which, ironically, Vince Cable shared when he was a Labour councillor in Glasgow in the 1970s before following the Gang of Four into the SDP and then the Liberals).

There was nothing wrong with the sentiment behind this of wanting to provide workers with a decent and improving standard of living. It’s just that, given capitalism, this is not possible. Capitalism simply cannot be made to work in the interest of workers.

Cooking the Books: Is Recovery Under Way? (2013)

The Cooking the Books column from the December 2013 issue of the Socialist Standard

If you go by the official statistics the answer will be ‘yes’ since the quarterly figures for GDP (Gross Domestic Product) have shown a slight increase for a number of successive quarters now.

GDP, however, is made up of various elements – government spending, business spending and consumer spending – but it is only business spending that drives the economy, the other two being dependent on it and following the path it takes. So an increase in GDP due to one of the other two elements might not necessarily signify a recovery. So the relevant question is: is business investment increasing?

The government is anxious to play up the figures both to encourage business confidence, i.e. whistling in the dark, and to attribute them to its policies. ‘I have been vindicated on economy, Osborne claims’ was a headline in the (London) Times (9 September) reporting his claim that critics who had advocated a different policy ‘cannot explain why the UK recovery has strengthened rapidly over the last six months.’

We have not been advocates of a different policy (it’s not the job of socialists to advise governments on how to run capitalism) but we can offer another explanation: that is something that has happened independently of government policy and was always eventually going to happen anyway.

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, has been rather more cautious. According to the (London) Times (11 September), he has spoken of the danger of ‘complacency, generated by a few quarters of economic data’ and said that ‘the beginnings of a recovery will not become meaningful until there is a strong and sustained business investment, which remains well down on pre-crash levels.’ Indeed it is. According to other figures from the Office for National Statistics:

‘From 1997 to 2008 GFCF was between 16 and 17 per cent of GDP. From 2009 onwards, this has fallen to between 14 and 15 per cent.’

GFCF is Gross Fixed Capital Formation which includes capital investment by the government as well as by businesses. Cable is right to point out that this will have to increase before there can be any talk of a recovery beginning.

Socialists accept that sooner or later there will be a recovery of business investment. As Marx pointed out, ‘permanent crises do not exist’ (Theories of Surplus Value, chapter XVII). Any more in fact that there can be a permanent boom. Capitalist production is a never-ending cycle of booms and slumps.

A slump eventually creates the conditions for a recovery of business investment (just as a boom eventually creates the condition for a slump). Stocks are cleared. Some businesses go under and their assets pass cheaply to their rivals (devaluation of capital). Real wages fall under the pressure of increased unemployment. Interest rates go down due to the supply of money-capital exceeding the demand for it.

With the possible exception of there still being room, even a need, for more business failures, these conditions have been met so the scene has been set for a recovery. But there is no telling how long it will take or whether it will be sustained. The slump won’t be over till GDP and business investment reach pre-slump levels and there’s a long way to go before that happens.

Greasy Pole: Cable unconnected? (2011)

The Greasy Pole column from the January 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard

In those heady post-election days last May Cameron and Clegg, smirking at the media assembled in Number Ten's garden, assured the nation that Coalition would be the only remedy to the maladies which Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling had so cruelly brought down on our innocent heads. One of the most conspicuous advantages sprouting from this venture into the New Politics (a phrase with implications rather more menacing than they were ready to acknowledge) would be the governmental presence of Vince Cable, influencing official policy on the economy. With all that what could possibly go wrong?

Well just a little over six months later the answer is that an awful lot is going wrong – and not only with what are called the ordinary people who fear for their chances of surviving the cuts but also for the Coalition itself, which can hardly be described as stable and united. For one thing there is the Alternative Vote, suspected by Tories nervously sitting on wafer-thin majorities as a convenient back-door into Parliament for any thrusting LibDem. And then, more calamitous, there has been the schism within LibDem ranks over their surrender to raising university tuition fees after they had in the mass signed that pledge not to do any such thing. Even worse – leading for them on this issue has been the hitherto saintly, all-knowing, all-wise Vince Cable who had the job of working out the details of the policy and then trying to persuade the rest to go along with it.

Joke
Cable rocketted to national prominence in December 2007 when, as stand-in leader while the LibDems were electing a successor to Ming Campbell, he drew attention to the new Premier Gordon Brown's “…remarkable transformation in the last few weeks from Stalin to Mr Bean, creating chaos out of order rather than order out of chaos”. (We should not be misled by the consequent rapturous laughter into rating this feeble effort at a joke as historically amusing – MPs are irritatingly liable to relieve their boredom in that way. Even if it had the effect of giving Cable some much needed publicity). Cable's leader Nick Clegg is not famous for making jokes – perhaps because of his sensitivity in the matter after David Cameron said he was one. But he does display a kind of infant passion to develop the necessary political cunning. Looked at in that way it is not difficult to detect a possible strategy involving Cable's allocation to defend the rise in tuition fees.

Train Wreck
It is, after all, not so long ago that Cable was a serious contender for the leadership and – after the Mr. Bean joke and Clegg's first fumbling among the front bench there was expressed regret among the LibDems that he had been so easily allowed to drop out. It could not have helped his case to have to defend the official party line in what Clegg expected to be a “train wreck” of a debate – before which Cable behaved like someone suffering from a serious head injury, apparently unable to decide whether to oppose, or support, or abstain on the increase according to whether he was talking about keeping a pledge or defending Coalition unity or what he called the national interest. In the end, of course, he gave in to blatant, self-interested ambition and held on to his wretched job by going along to the Commons where, professorial spectacles clinging perilously to the end of his nose, he mounted an emphatic defence of the policy which he was supposed to have grave doubts about.

Shell Oil
It is clear from Cable's record that he is no stranger to doubt and confusion. Beginning as a Liberal he moved to Labour then the SDP before returning to what had been re-invented as the LibDems. During this journey he experienced what must have been a seriously instructive spell in the 1970s Scottish Labour Party, including a period as a Glasgow councillor. Eventually his multiple attempts to get into Parliament yielded him the verdant, pricey seat of Twickenham. Heavily qualified as an economist, he was a university lecturer and a Treasury Finance Officer in Kenya. From 1995 to 1997 he was Chief Economist to the oil giant Royal Dutch Shell. During that period the suppression of the people of Nigeria whose lives had been devastated by the Shell operations became an international scandal as the murderous military dictatorship of Sani Abacha developed in intensity and barbarism. In an abrupt loss of his famous powers of grasping a situation, Cable denied any responsibility in, or knowledge of, those calamitous events: an interviewing journalist found him “deeply evasive and avoiding all questions”, another who later asked a spokeswoman for a comment was told “…he does not feel that he knows enough about the latest developments to be able to comment”.

Confidence
This kind of record is important in sizing up a political ruler who, with an eye to winning high office, is touting for our support. In the case of Vince Cable we have to consider his reputation for unwavering prescience about capitalism's endemic crises which enabled him to sprout into prominence with his (distinctly unoriginal) forecast of the doom which would follow the credit boom. But how usefully did he apply this? In fact he allowed his insights to languish unattended, unspoken. Asked whether he had publicised the disastrous image in his book The Storm he lamely replied: “No, I didn't. That's quite true… But you're quite right…I haven't been to the States for years and years, so I wouldn't claim to have any feel for what's been going on there.” This unconvincing blather leads us to question what gain there is for human society in putting our confidence in leaders such as Cable. How could he be any more reliable and effective than the hordes of malicious swindlers before him? What is stopping us from preferring to have confidence in ourselves to change the world as it needs to be?

Ivan

Greasy Pole: Woolas – another fine mess (2010)

The Greasy Pole column from the December 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

There are limits. As Phil Woolas, until recently the MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth, was confronted when the Election Court found that during his campaign in May 2010 he lied about his Liberal Democrat opponent. Rather more complicated and exciting, if the Court judgement stands there will be a succulently fascinating by-election which promises to expose the ruthless assassinatory tactics of the participating parties, including the fact that, for all their mock indignation at Woolas' methods, the LibDems are not noted for having any more scruples than the rest. It will also provide the LibDems with an opportunity to explain to their angry, bewildered supporters why, in their euphoria at being part of the Coalition, they betrayed the election pledges they made – such as on child benefit and university tuition fees. It is likely to be an ugly, if entertaining, experience in which it has to be borne in mind that the whole process, for example Woolas and his mangling of truth, happens in order to transform one of the mendacious, grovelling candidates into an Honourable Member who, for example, cannot henceforth be denounced as a liar because the worst that is allowed to be said about anyone who gets to sit on those benches is that they suffer from some confusion over reality. Those are the kinds of limits which Woolas is said to have offended against.

Lumley
There are some significant differences of opinion about Woolas' conduct of his career as an MP and a Minister. On the one hand a Labour Party member who contested for the candidature in the 1995 by-election saw him as “...a hard-working member and a decent and conscientious person”. But a political correspondent prefers “a political bruiser, not universally liked, whom some colleagues think got what he deserved at the election court...” And in the Guardian Julian Glover weighs in with “...an unpleasant authoritarian and parliament will be better off without him...” That first election campaign in 1995 was notable for the rancour of Labour's personal attacks on the LibDem candidate as being “high on tax and soft on drugs”. This designed exploitation of some nasty, deep-rooted prejudices impressed even Peter Mandelson, who admitted “...not only our opponents but some in Labour would denounce our 'negative' tactics...For tactical reasons, I felt we had little choice”. Woolas won the re-arranged seat in 1997 and thereafter rose steadily up the greasy pole until in October 2008 he became minister responsible for Borders and Immigration. It was then, in May 2009, that he was trapped into a confrontation, before a horde of ravenous TV cameras, with the popular actor Joanna Lumley to answer for the Labour government effectively refusing Gurkha ex-soldiers to settle in this country. Woolas wordlessly squirmed in embarrassment – Lumley breathes rather than speaks and was using hazy concepts like fairness and gratitude while he had to have regard for his budgets – and agreed to re-open the matter.

Cable
One inconvenient outcome of Woolas' electoral misdemeanour was the stimulus it gave to the pressing question of why similar penalties are not unvaryingly applied to any MP who employs false promises to smooth their way to Westminster (although if that were the case there would be very, very few bottoms on the green benches). The actual response has been worked to exhaustion by LibDems fearfully insecure of their place in the Coalition. Here, for one, is Vince Cable in the House of Commons on 12 October: “Yes I signed the pledge (on university tuition fees). But the current financial situation is appalling, truly appalling. All pledges have to be re-examined from first principles”. But this is the man who was promoted to us by his party as not just an agile ballroom dancer but an economist so deeply learned as to be able to see beyond the economic horizon to what is approaching and to take the necessary steps to avert any crisis such as the one which is now gripping the world. So it is necessary to ask: are there any other disasters which Cable has failed to see? And from the prolix depths of this ignorance did he offer any other pledges, attractive to a spellbound electorate, which he is now about to renege on?

Clegg
And what about the LibDem leader who, smugly satisfied at having outsmarted all rivals – including Cable – for the top job, felt able to patronise him as the most hopeful therapist for British capitalism? Since the LibDems slithered into partnership with the Tories Clegg has been under the most severe pressure about the party's disowned promises. This is how on 23 October he referred to child benefits and tuition fees: “I feel very bad. I have had to eat those words...this is not capricious, it is not ideological, it is not happening overnight, it is thoughtful and it is a plan over four years...” And in the Commons on 10 November: “I of course acknowledge that this is an extraordinarily difficult issue ... Because of the financial situation we have had to put forward a different policy...” But Clegg has been touted around the political scene as a hugely knowledgeable, clever operator. With such a glowing reputation how could he have been so insensitive to the gathering storm that he not only made those pledges but allowed the rest of his party to do likewise? Why should we have any confidence that he will become any more hopeful over the next four years?

Clegg and Cable now pose as serious politicians, relieved and grateful to have been put right about the election pledges which, they now admit, were recklessly ill-informed. Are their excuses really the best they can offer to cover their impotence and dishonesty? Are there any other pledges which they will betray in the hope of nurturing their sleazy ambitions? Should we, in other words, believe anything they and their like say? Is it not preferable to treat then all with the contempt they deserve while we work on for the revolutionary change in society.

Ivan

Cooking the Books: Cable and capitalism (2010)

The Cooking the Books column from the November 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Capitalism”, the Business Secretary Vince Cable told the Libdem Conference in September, “takes no prisoners and kills competition where it can.” (London Times, 22 September). He was of course playing to the gallery, but no minister in the Blair and Brown governments ever dared to utter such harsh words about capitalism. They were too scared even to mention the word “capitalism” for fear of upsetting the business world whose interests they knew they were there to serve.

Not that Cable is against capitalism. He’s merely in favour of government intervention to curb its excesses. As one of the Tory Prime Minister’s aides was reported as saying ,“Vince is simply spelling out what happens when you have uncontrolled capitalism”. And, as he himself said, “the Government’s agenda is not one of laissez faire”, adding “markets are often irrational or rigged.”

He – and the rest of the Con-Dem government – are in favour of government intervention to try to get capitalism to work as in theory it is supposed to, with competitive markets keeping prices down and allowing only normal profits to be made in the long run.

If, because of monopolistic practices or rigged markets, some capitalist firms are permanently able to make abnormally high profits this will be at the expense of the profits of the rest of the capitalist class. Not that this will restrain the firms in question – they go for maximum profits, taking no prisoners. So, it’s up to the government to restrain them in the overall interest of the capitalist class as a whole. It’s part of its remit as the executive committee of the ruling class.

Even so, Cable upset the business world. Richard Lambert, the current director general of the CBI, denounced Cable’s “emotional language”, saying “Mr Cable has harsh things to say about the capitalist system; it will be interesting to hear his ideas for an alternative.” A former CBI director-general, Digby (now Lord) Jones condemned his remarks as “rabble-rousing” and unworthy of a member of the government. (The London Times, 23 September) reminded him that “the Business Secretary’s principal task is to help companies to earn profits.” Even the former Labour Chancellor, Alistair Darling, still loyal to business, joined in, criticising Cable for “denouncing business and the City in general” which he said was “extremely damaging to our reputation abroad” (Evening Standard, 24 September).

In response, Cable rather cleverly added to the pre-released text of his speech the words “as Adam Smith explained over 200 years ago.”

He was referring to the following passage from part II of chapter X of Book I of Smith’s The Wealth of Nations:

“People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”

While Smith provided the theoretical basis for the policy of laissez faire implemented in Britain (by state intervention) in the 1830s and 1840s – and which resulted in children being sent down the mines – he was under no uncritical defender of the behaviour of capitalists, as director-generals of the CBI might like to think.

In any event, Cable was not offering an alternative to the capitalist system and is well aware of his duty as Business Secretary “to help companies earn [or, more accurately, reap] profits”. That, in fact, is the duty of all governments.